Estimating the prevalence of deception in online review communities

Consumers' purchase decisions are increasingly influenced by user-generated online reviews. Accordingly, there has been growing concern about the potential for posting deceptive opinion spam---fictitious reviews that have been deliberately written to sound authentic, to deceive the reader. But while this practice has received considerable public attention and concern, relatively little is known about the actual prevalence, or rate, of deception in online review communities, and less still about the factors that influence it.